Japan's First Legal Sex Change
By Reuters
Contributed by Rachelle Austin and Elizabeth Parker
After more than 10 years
of wishing and waiting, a Japanese
transsexual will get treatment
at last -- the first of hundreds who have made requests.
Japanese physician Dr. Takao Harashina
has been given the go-ahead to perform the nation's first legal
sex reassignment. The biological
female who will begin the six-month process within the next few weeks
has been waiting six years for
the medical procedure and has wished for it for more than a decade.
Estimates of Japanese citizens
desiring sex reassignment range from 2,200 to 7,000. Previously, those
wishing gender reassignment were
forced to go to other countries, although it's suspected that "back alley"
reassignments have taken place.
Japan's slow progress in this area has been attributed to the 1969
conviction under the Eugenic Protection
Law of a physician who performed a sex reassignment without
the required legal actions.
Harashina had applied in 1995 on
behalf of the current subject and another female only to be rejected by
the ethics committee of the Saitama
Medical School in 1996 on the grounds that society would not
approve. But later the school
went on to set up a gender clinic which developed a set of guidelines for
the
diagnosis and treatment of transsexuals,
and last year the Ministry of Health and Welfare agreed to a set
of conditions developed by the
Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology under which sex
reassignment could be approved.
Those conditions include arrangements for psychotherapy and hormone
treatment following the surgery.
In July 1997, a medical team at Saitama reassessed Harashina's two
patients. One was recommended
last month for treatment, and on May 12 the school's ethics committee
gave final approval.
Two hundred people have submitted
requests at Saitama Medical School, 70% of them female, although
only about 10% of them are expected
to receive final approval under the strict assessment guidelines.
Saitama deputy director Kazuo
Horiuchi noted that, "Japan's social and legal conditions do not recognize
the change of gender. Although
we can help our patients feel at home with their true sexuality, we can
do
little in helping them fight against
the legal and social prejudice shown towards them." The Ministry of
Justice reaffirmed May 13 that
it is adamant in refusing to change birth records to reflect sex reassignment.
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